Affordable Housing Institute : US

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

–Edmund Burke (1790)

 

 

 

A mother and her child walk through what once was her bedroom and is now burning after her house was set on fire by Zimbabwe police at Porta farm in Harare on June 30. (Photo: STR / AFP-Getty Images)

 

Give the Administration credit for taking another step in isolating Robert Mugabe’s criminally kleptocratic slow-genocidal dictatorship:

 

President Bush is targeting the U.S. accounts of leading government officials in Zimbabwe, saying those who work with President Robert Mugabe must restore democracy or face sanctions.

 

The White House announced Wednesday that Bush had signed an executive order Tuesday blocking all property and financial holdings in the United States owned by 128 people and 33 institutions in Zimbabwe.

 

It also bars U.S. citizens from having financial dealings with them.

 

However small, this step is in the right direction.

 

Bush already had issued sanctions against Mugabe and 76 other officials under an executive order signed in March 2003. Tuesday’s order added 53 people and applied to their immediate family members. It also allows the secretary of state and treasury secretary to expand the list without a presidential order.

 

 

What is the connection between Zimbabwe and housing?  Simply that:

 

1.       Mr. Mugabe’s pogrom is being conducted through destruction of homes and communities, however humble.

2.       With magnificently cunning hypocrisy, he has cloaked it by hijacking the language of urban revitalization and market renewal. 

3.       The housing community has been mute, allowing Mr. Mugabe’s offensively nonsensical claims to stand unrefuted, and hence to clutter up stories that ought to be commendatory and instead ‘give both sides.’

 

I am appalled at the silence, embarrassed for the housing community, and disappointed in the press for swallowing it.

 

Bush said that since the first order, conditions in Zimbabwe had continued to deteriorate.

“The government continues to suppress opposition groups and civil society, undermine the independent media, ignore decisions by its courts, and refuse to enter into meaningful negotiations with other political actors,” Bush wrote in a leader to congressional leaders.

“Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections in March 2005 were not free or fair. Recent demolitions of low income housing and informal markets have caused 700,000 people to lose their homes, jobs, or both. Additional measures are required to promote democratic change.”

 

About 4 million Zimbabweans, or a third of the population, urgently need food aid, according to U.N. estimates.

 

Zimbabwean National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) members are arrested by police after demonstrating for a new constitution and a boycott of the upcoming senatorial elections in Harare November 5, 2005.

 

Recent constitutional changes in Zimbabwe will prevent white owners from recovering confiscated farms and could be used to strip critics of their passports and right to travel.

 

The European Union has imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe that include banning Mugabe and other government officials from traveling to EU countries.

 

By themselves these small gestures will make minimal change, but they are symbolic and significant. 

 

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.  Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

– Martin Niemoller, 1946 (or so)

 

 

Martin Niemoller, U-boat captain in World War I, imprisoned by Hitler 1938-45

 

Good for you, Bush Administration.  Now take the next logical step:

 

Analysts in Zimbabwe say that extension of U.S. travel sanctions to include more senior members of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party are welcomed but do not go far enough.

 

John Makumbe, veteran political scientist from the University of Zimbabwe said the travel sanctions irritated senior members of ZANU-PF. He said he was pleased that sanctions included central bank governor Gono. But, he said, the measures do not go far enough and the United States should ensure that no children of ZANU-PF leaders should be given visas to travel to the United States on holiday or for study.

 

Veteran economist Tony Hawkins said the travel sanctions may have annoyed senior ZANU-PF leaders, but are largely ineffective in helping change government policy.

 

He said if they were extended to all children of ZANU-PF leaders, who mostly study in the United States, it might make a significant difference.

 

Faster, please.

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